Search Results

A combination of economic anger, cultural anxiety, and political alienation is changing our societies, impacting our economies, and altering our politics. Alexander explains how these factors, combined with the advent of social media, have given rise to populist movements across the West; resulting in the election of President Trump in the USA and the UK's decision to leave the European Union. Alexander discusses the implications of a Trump administration on the West’s economic partnerships and security alliances. With both the transatlantic relationship and European unity at risk, Alexander explores how the West is confronting the new authoritarianism from Asia in the East to Europe’s borders in the West. Utilizing his experience as former UK Europe Minister and Minister for South and South East Asia, together with his ongoing work with the Future of Diplomacy program at Harvard Kennedy School, Alexander offers an analysis of the impact of Britain’s Brexit on business in terms of trade, investment, regulation, and the relocation of financial and other EU institutions from London to other European cities and what this means for long term economic growth and diplomatic relations across the West.

In an increasingly networked world where industrial control systems and physical infrastructure are linked to the Internet, a cyber-based attack could have astronomically devastating physical and economic effects on society, at home and abroad. No one knows this better than General Keith Alexander, a recognized expert in warfare and security, chief of the Central Security Service and head of USCYBERCOM. What companies really need is a level of certainty that they will detect cyber intrusions–but the question remains, “how do you get there?” Based on his level of experience in both the government and private sector, Alexander provides insights on how to drive such a solution. In a detailed discussion of immense take-home value to economists, technology buffs, business owners, executives, leaders, and citizens across the board, he examines such topics as: the vulnerability of critical infrastructure; the susceptibility of the military’s command and control structure; the dependence of the economy on the Internet’s smooth functioning; and the imperativeness for the private sector to assume its portion of the responsibility for protecting the infrastructure that connects to the Internet. Moreover, he articulates a road map for what is likely to be the strategic challenge of the next several decades: how we protect our increasingly networked world in a way that preserves freedom and liberty.

With advanced degrees in both physics and electronic warfare, an unprecedented tenure as head of the NSA, and over 40 years of top-level experience as a leader, General Keith Alexander is among the most influential figures in national security to date. A colossal undertaking given the rapidity of change and the vulnerabilities that change brings—specifically when policy, technology and ways of thinking or looking at the world lag behind—Alexander’s methodology is more than fit for the task. It is multipronged, highly complex, comprehensive, and largely straddles his efforts to protect the nation from cyber attacks. A critical figure in developing and advocating the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative and leading USCYBERCOM, Alexander’s approach to national security helped to bridge the gap between agencies and focus the efforts of the government in ways that not only paralleled but jumped ahead of the trajectory. An agent of change who truly understands its impact, Alexander has transformed the way we think about new domains of warfare and security. In a detailed discussion of critical import to countless members of the public and private sectors, Alexander examines the nation’s current state of affairs, what’s on the horizon, and offers solutions about what we can do to stay ahead of the curve to protect America’s most vulnerable targets and secure our nation for future generations.

Drawing on her widespread experience working to improve U.S. national security policies in the Senate, Kelly Ayotte shares her view of the geopolitical developments every organization needs to know in the face of continuing global unrest. With these instability and security concerns in mind, Ayotte offers sharp insights for organizations concerned about cybersecurity, continuing sequestration, terrorist attacks, and what needs to be done moving forward to keep us all safe.

Richard Behar speaks about what businesses and governments are doing (and not doing) to secure computers, which is essential to national security given that we all are now interconnected.

He wrote a definitive story for Forbes magazine (May 2016) about a clandestine cybersecurity military squad in Israel called “Unit 8200.” Behar explains why the unit is “probably the best school in the world for entrepreneurship.” He also wrote a cover story for Forbes about under-the-radar ventures in high-tech between Israelis and Palestinians.

Behar’s expertise in cybersecurity dates to 1997, when he was ahead of the curve on the subject of email security—with a cover story in Fortune magazine called Who's Reading Your Email. For this award-winning exposé, which was used in college computer classrooms, Behar enlisted top-flight former Air Force computer security experts to hack a Fortune 500 company—with the firm's permission—to show how easy it was to do. He also spent days with one of the country’s most notorious computer hackers for a profile, soon after the hacker's home was raided by Secret Service.

Just after 9-11, Behar exposed a radical Arab website based in Texas, which had links to the Hamas terrorist group, that was raided by federal agents five days before the 9-11 attack. He then flew to Pakistan, where he reported two award-winning pieces (for Fortune and CNN), one of which studied the movement of money by radical groups throughout the banking world. Recently, Behar was invited by the Prime Minister's Office in Israel for a private tour of that country's "Cyber City," a collection of buildings rising up from a desert city that may become the world's #1 hub for cybersecurity—both for businesses and governments. He has also been gathering data on how social media companies such as Facebook, Twitter, Google and YouTube are facilitating global jihad.

Every day, members of the President’s national security team gather in the White House Situation Room. Armed with the latest policy and intelligence reports, they debate options and make recommendations to the President for navigating a world more fluid and fraught with complexity than ever before.

For eight years, Antony Blinken was privileged to sit at this table, where he saw how some of our toughest, most urgent global challenges and goals reside squarely at the intersection of foreign policy and technology. What does the revolution in robotics mean for warfighting, or advances in artificial intelligence for labor markets, the advent of digital currencies for our sanctions regime, breakthroughs in genome editing for food security, or developments in distance learning for refugee children?

Yet, many of those grappling with these challenges at the highest levels of government are not necessarily technical experts. Learn how the country’s senior national security leaders sought to bridge the divide between policy and practice, innovators and diplomats, Silicon Valley and Washington, computers and humans—ultimately inspiring a new generation of problem-solvers to join the call to public service.

This talk zooms out and discusses how to structure our thinking about the really big picture—the key transitions in history that fundamentally changed the human condition, and the prospects of technological transformations, existential risk, and posthumanity that might lie ahead. This talk by Professor Nick Bostrom draws on his unique body of work over two decades in many relevant areas, including his books Anthropic Bias, Global Catastrophic Risk, Human Enhancement, and the New York Times bestseller Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies.

The neolithic revolution (agriculture) and the industrial revolution changed the human condition more than any events in history. Today we may be approaching a third technological revolution—the transition to superintelligence. Professor Bostrom reviews technical ongoing advances along several paths that lead to the creation of greater-than-human general intelligence, including biomedical cognitive enhancement, improvements in epistemic institutions, and advances in artificial intelligence, and tells the real story of what is going on behind the hype and media misconception. Professor Bostrom leads a team of 20 eminent computer scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and philosophers at Oxford University in the unique Future of Humanity Institute, whose work is changing the global dialogue on the future of technology.

As companies and organizations face the myriad threats driven by a rapidly changing and increasingly complex global environment, John Brennan dissects the role of private-public partnerships and discusses the evolving nature of cyber threats and options for protecting mission-critical capabilities as well as our privacy, national security and future prosperity.